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Concussion Committee Breaks With Predecessor

WASHINGTON — They accused a fellow doctor of minimizing solid evidence of the dangers of football concussions. They concurred that data collected by the N.F.L.’s former brain-injury leadership was “infected,” said that their committee should be assembled anew, and formally requested that the group’s former chairman, Dr. Elliot Pellman, not speak at a conference Wednesday.

For the first time these remarks came not from outside critics of N.F.L. research but from those now in charge of it — Dr. H. Hunt Batjer and Dr. Richard G. Ellenbogen, prominent neurosurgeons who became co-chairmen of a new league committee in March. One week after two members of Congress accused the doctors of sounding too much like their predecessors, and on the eve of a league-sponsored symposium in Washington held by Johns Hopkins Medicine, Batjer and Ellenbogen made clear they planned to chart a new course.

The two doctors criticized Johns Hopkins’s promotional brochure for Wednesday’s conference — which was open only to N.F.L. medical personnel, other doctors and members of the United States Department of Defense — for playing down existing evidence of brain damage in retired football players.

The opening paragraph described the disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy as “now being reported in football players, although with unknown frequency.” It added that these and related matters had been reported by the news media “with considerable hype around assertions of long-term harm to players from head injuries.”

Batjer and Ellenbogen said that the frequency of reports of C.T.E. in players is not unknown — a Boston University research group has diagnosed it in all 12 former college and N.F.L. players of various ages it had tested for the condition.

“They aren’t assertions or hype — they are facts,” said Ellenbogen, the chief of neurological surgery at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, who has been instrumental in drafting legislation to protect young athletes from head injuries.

He added: “Doctors were relatively ineffectual for 25 years on this issue. Then it’s on the front page and everything focuses like a laser beam and things begin to change from baby steps to giant steps forward protecting kids. From a doctor-patient perspective, it’s been the single best thing that has happened to this subject.”

Dr. Constantine G. Lyketsos, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins who is directing Wednesday’s conference, said in a telephone interview that he wrote the brochure and that the N.F.L. had no role with the event, other than providing financing. He defended his choice of words.

Regarding news media coverage of the harm caused by repeated concussions in football players, Lyketsos said: “There is a concern that I have that the possibility of serious long-term consequences are being overemphasized without clear evidence. It could turn out correct. It could turn out incorrect. We don’t know.”

Photo

Richard G. Ellenbogen, a co-chairman of the N.F.L.’s concussion committee, came in for criticism at a hearing in New York last week. Credit
Richard Perry/The New York Times

He added: “I worry that it might be a disservice. That’s a possibility.”

The league spokesman Greg Aiello declined to comment on Lyketsos’s statements, other than saying that the league has given $1 million to the Boston University group to support its research.

The former leaders of the N.F.L. concussion committee generally agreed with Lyketsos, an attitude that ultimately came to the attention of Congress and led to several hearings on the subject of sports concussions in athletes of all ages. Batjer and Ellenbogen had a shaky debut before some frustrated members of the House Judiciary Committee during a forum in New York on May 24, but in the following days they made sure they would no longer resemble their predecessors.

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The doctors said the old committee’s ongoing studies on helmets and retired players’ cognitive decline — whose structure and data were strongly criticized by outside experts — would not be used in any way moving forward. They said they were influenced by a comment made to them last Monday by Representative Anthony D. Weiner, Democrat of New York: “You have years of an infected system here that your job is to some degree to mop up.”

“The word ‘infected’ hit me right between the eyes,” said Ellenbogen. He and Batjer became co-chairmen of the N.F.L. committee in March.

Batjer added: “We all had issues with some of the methodologies described, the inherent conflict of interest that was there in many areas, that was not acceptable by any modern standards or not acceptable to us. I wouldn’t put up with that, our universities wouldn’t put up with that, and we don’t want our professional reputations damaged by conflicts that were put upon us.”

Batjer said that he and Ellenbogen had begun reconstituting their committee from scratch. He said that six members had been selected so far, none of them holdovers from the prior regime.

The doctors so wanted to distance themselves from the past that on Monday they requested that Pellman, who was scheduled to deliver some opening remarks at the Johns Hopkins symposium, be removed from the program. Pellman was the chairman of the N.F.L. concussion committee from 1994 to 2007 and stayed on it until he resigned in March. He remains the league’s medical director and helped with the conference’s logistics.

On Tuesday, an e-mail message was distributed to conference organizers saying that Pellman would not attend the conference for family-related reasons.

“Neither Rich nor I thought he should appear to represent the N.F.L. in what would look like a leadership role,” Batjer said. “It’s not about Elliot. It’s about a complete severance from all prior relationships from that committee.”

Aiello, the league spokesman, indicated that the N.F.L. would not scrutinize or attempt to influence the committee’s leadership.

“Drs. Ellenbogen and Batjer have full authority to make decisions regarding the work of the Head, Neck and Spine Committee, including organization, membership, status of current and new research, and the like,” Aiello said. “We fully support them and will continue to do so.”

A version of this article appears in print on June 2, 2010, on Page B12 of the New York edition with the headline: Concussion Committee Breaks With Predecessor. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe